Leaving the EU: Rights of EU Citizens

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 5th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the good doctor, Dr Julian Lewis.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Does the Minister share my surprise at recent press reports suggesting that EU citizens living in the United Kingdom after Brexit would be offered full voting rights in Westminster parliamentary elections? Will she confirm that that is not going to happen?

[Caroline Nokes]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that question. Deciding who can vote in UK elections is a Cabinet Office competence. EU citizens currently have the right to vote in local elections and that will prevail until there is a change in primary legislation. However, such matters are for future discussion and negotiation, and I cannot set them out today.

Amesbury Update

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 9th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

I thank the right hon. Lady for her comments. I join her in expressing our thoughts for the family and friends of Dawn Sturgess, who will of course be going through an incredibly difficult time. She was right to start with those remarks and to remind us all that Charlie Rowley is still gravely ill in hospital. The thoughts of the whole House—of all of us present today—remain with him. We wish nothing less than a speedy recovery for him.

As she did last week, the right hon. Lady quite rightly took the opportunity to commend the work of the emergency services. As I mentioned, I went to Amesbury this weekend and met emergency workers from the local police, health and fire services, and took the opportunity to thank them for everything they have done and continue to do, both in response to the original incident and, of course, now. In their approach to the work and how they have done it, they continue to help local people and to build confidence, so the right hon. Lady was right to mention them.

The right hon. Lady mentioned that she has heard people ask in some quarters whether more information could be made available, especially relating to the original incident in March. That desire for more information, especially from local people, is perfectly understandable, but, as she herself appreciated this is a live, ongoing police investigation, and what the police can share with the public is always limited. That is understandable, but as she noted, and I thank her for that, the head of counter terrorism policing, Mr Neil Basu, has now made a further statement, which touches on both the original investigation and this current incident. I have every reason to believe that he is sharing whatever information he possibly can with the public, but it is right that the information that is shared is a decision made by the police, and by the police alone. If it would be helpful to the right hon. Lady, I would happily arrange a further briefing on Privy Council terms with perhaps the deputy national security adviser. In that way, she could get a bit more information. If she wants to take that up, I think that she would find it helpful, and that offer is available to her.

The right hon. Lady also talked about the support package. I share her concerns there. She will know from the original incident that a support package was put together by central Government working with the local council, Wiltshire Council, and that a number of businesses have received support. Given this new incident and the impact that that can have locally on businesses, and given the meetings that I have had with some of those businesses, it is important that we look at that again and see what further support can be provided. At today’s Cobra meeting, I felt that it should be cross-Government support, taking in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government as well as the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and the Treasury. They should all be involved and working together. That is why the Cabinet Office offered to co-ordinate that activity, and it is working on that as we speak. The local Member of Parliament, my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen), who joins me on the Front Bench, has been very involved, coming up with some helpful suggestions for local businesses, so we will certainly be following up on those, too.

The right hon. Lady said that speculation should be limited. I do not think that speculation will add in any way to what local people and the country at large want to see. As she quite rightly said, people want to be led by the evidence, the full facts, which is why we must all allow the police to do their work. Whenever I have any further information that I can share publicly, I will, of course, come to the House to do so. As I have just said, if it is information that cannot be made public, I am happy to make sure that she gets updates on Privy Council terms. I very much welcome her approach to this, because it is exactly what the country wants to see.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Given that, exactly 12 years ago, the Russian Federation Council passed a law permitting the extra-judicial killing of opponents overseas, is it not rather strange that Sergei Skripal was living in plain sight in Salisbury? Can the Home Secretary assure the House that those other defectors, such as Oleg Gordievsky, who has been sentenced to death in absentia, and Victor Makarov are having their security arrangements suitably reviewed and any protection that they require afforded to them?

[Sajid Javid]

I am very happy to assure my right hon. Friend that, clearly, there were lessons to be learned from the original incident, and that, no doubt, there will be in due course from this new incident. I know that the security services and the police have drawn lessons from the action on 4 March, and part of that is making sure that all people in Britain, whether they are British citizens or others, have the level of protection that is necessary.

Medicinal Cannabis

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 18th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hurd]

I thank the hon. and learned Lady for that question; she is right to insist on the importance of an evidence-based approach. Of course, the Home Office regularly keeps the evidence under review. As I have said at this Dispatch Box before, one key milestone in this process is to review what the World Health Organisation feels about this issue, because it is conducting a major review of it. We are actively considering whether there is an argument for taking a more urgent step in terms of reviewing the evidence, the processes and the way we handle these cases, and I will keep the House informed on that.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend accept that there is nothing new, and no inherent contradiction, in having available for medicinal use addictive drugs that one would not allow for recreational use? May I illustrate that by describing my personal experience of 32 years ago? When recovering from severe back surgery, I was given a rather pleasant drug and I asked for a repeat prescription, only to be told that as morphia is related to heroin, there were limits on how much they were going to give me. So why can common sense not prevail in the case of marijuana, as occurred in that case?

[Mr Hurd]

I thank my right hon. Friend for sharing his personal experience and bringing back what were clearly some happy memories for him. I understand the point he makes and come back to what I was saying: we are absolutely serious about reviewing urgently our processes and policy in this area, to make sure that we are as consistent and up-to-date as possible. I have signalled today that we recognise, as did the Prime Minister this morning, that we need to make some changes to the way we handle these cases, which is why I have introduced the first step that we have taken today.

Windrush

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Leo Docherty (Aldershot) (Con)]

I am very pleased to speak in this debate and to follow the hon. Member for Reading East (Matt Rodda).

It has been very obvious today and in previous debates that there is justifiable anger over this issue. I think it is partly motivated by the fact that the contribution of the Windrush generation to building our society and economy in the post-war years has not been sufficiently recognised, or is undermined by what has happened. One element that we would do well to celebrate and recognise is the contribution of many members of the Windrush generation to our armed forces, prior to their arrival in this country in 1948, during the second world war. During the second world war, some 10,000 Caribbean soldiers served in the British armed forces across all three services, and many conducted themselves in a very distinguished manner.

That includes one Billy Strachan, who arrived in England from Jamaica in 1940 to serve in the Royal Air Force. He conducted himself with distinction, completing 30 missions as a part of Bomber Command at a time when the casualty rate in it was some 50%. He was made an officer and completed his training at Cranwell. The historian Ashley Jackson, in his book “The British Empire”, quotes Billy Strachan, who describes arriving from Jamaica as a new young pilot officer in his RAF unit and his surprise on meeting the batman he had been allocated:

“I was a little…boy from the Caribbean and instinctively I called him ‘Sir’. ‘No, Sir’, he hastily corrected, ‘It is I who call you “Sir”’.”

That is a very interesting vignette, and it reflects the remarkable role that serving in the armed forces can often have in advancing human rights.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I only wish I had known my hon. Friend was going to make that point, or I would have looked up the name of the very distinguished Afro-Caribbean officer from world war two who was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and was one of many people from that background who were recognised for great gallantry in the fight against fascism and Nazism.

[Leo Docherty]

I am grateful for my right hon. Friend’s intervention, and I hope that, prior to the conclusion of my speech, another Member will intervene to give us that name.

Of course, it was not such a positive experience for every member of the Caribbean community who served in the British Army. Allan Wilmot, who also came from Jamaica, volunteered to join the Royal Navy in 1941 and served throughout the second world war. He described the sense of hostility that many felt on arriving in the British Isles after the war:

“Being British, you feel like you are coming home, but when we came here it was like we dropped out of the sky. Nobody knew anything about us.”

Those people had to display the same bravery that they had demonstrated during the war on arrival in this country, to overcome that hostility, and of course many of them overcame it successfully and went on to contribute very meaningfully to our economy and our society.

The distinguished service of Caribbean armed forces men and women is not confined to the history books. There is no finer example of gallantry in the modern era than Johnson Beharry, from Grenada, who served with the Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment in Iraq and was awarded the Victoria Cross in 2005 for his remarkable bravery in Amarah. Anyone who has served recently in the armed forces will have very positive experiences of serving shoulder to shoulder with members of the Commonwealth and Caribbean soldiers. I was very pleased to serve alongside Guardsmen from St Lucia and Jamaica.

My interest in the experience of soldiers from abroad who have come to this country and then go on to settle here also links to the experience of our Gurkha soldiers. They, like the Windrush generation, navigated the transition from service life to civilian life. Just as we are hugely proud of the distinguished conduct and contribution that the Gurkhas make, we would do very well today to be similarly proud of the distinguished service of a generation of Caribbean soldiers and the positive contribution they made in the second world war to guarding and defending our freedom.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 16th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

The hon. Lady makes a really valid point. One of the challenges is that, while broadcast is obviously covered by Ofcom and so on, some individuals move online and broadcast speeches that would be illegal if they were broadcast under Ofcom’s responsibility. I am due to visit the United States this week, and that is exactly one of the points that I shall be raising, so her question was very timely.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

If a relative suspects that a vulnerable family member is being radicalised online, what advice would the Minister give that relative about what would happen to that vulnerable person if they were reported?

[Mr Wallace]

First of all, the relative could make a report to the police, the local authority, local safeguarding officers or safeguarding officers at school. That report would then be looked at in conjunction with a Prevent panel. People’s names would not be logged; they would not be part of a deep surveillance operation. They would simply be looked at, and the case would be discussed at a multi-agency level. Over 30% of cases are referred to other safeguarding—it might be domestic abuse or sexual abuse—and about half see no further action taken. So it is all done delicately, with respect for the individual and respect for the community. At the end, we get a good outcome, whereby a significant number of people are given assistance and are no longer radicalised or a threat.

Health, Social Care and Security

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Wednesday 28th June 2017 Commons Chamber

[Ms Abbott]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that helpful intervention, and I ask the House to focus on the information he has brought forward.

After seven years of Tory government, there are 20,000 fewer police staff, 10,000 fewer firefighters and 1,000 fewer Border Force guards. When the Conservatives came to office in 2010, they immediately cut Security Service personnel by 650; now they expect plaudits when they pledge an increase.

All ordinary public sector workers have faced pay freezes and pay caps, which have made them worse off. Between the coalition’s coming into office in 2010 and May this year, inflation has seen prices rise by more than 15%. In reality, whatever figures the Government want to throw around, public sector workers have had effective cuts to their pensions and seen large-scale job losses because of inflation. They have been asked to do more with less.

The Opposition say that asking the security services, and public sector workers generally, to do more with less is unfair, unworkable and counter-productive. It has led to low morale, difficulties in recruitment and retention—particularly in parts of the country where house prices are spiralling—staff shortages and gaps in services. Those public services are among the most important that any civilised society offers. In his remarks, my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth) will highlight the effect of austerity and Government cuts on our NHS. The cuts in vital services—the police, the fire services, the Border Force and the security services—have been serious, and they come in addition to the cuts that have already forced out more than 20,000 police staff.

I turn to the counter-terrorism strategy. Labour welcomes the considered approach outlined in the Queen’s Speech; too often, the knee-jerk reaction of Governments has been further legislation. We believe that it is right to review what is happening in relation to the evolving terrorist threat and its many and varied sources and purposes, but the terms of the counter-terrorism review are crucial. Labour believes that the following questions must be addressed. Are there sufficient resources and are they properly directed? Are there gaps in the legislation, or is it catch-all and ineffective? What is the role of community policing in gathering intelligence? Sometimes, Ministers seem to think that community policing has no role in combating terrorism, but we believe that it does.

Is there a danger that communities are being alienated by Prevent, although good work is done under the Prevent badge? Should we review Prevent? How can community engagement be increased, and could we immediately take basic precautionary measures, such as installing barriers to cars and trucks? Should terrorism prevention and investigation measures, or TPIMs, be used more frequently, as Max Hill, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, says? If so, should they be subject to better due process?

We believe that some of the answers to these questions are self-evident. If the Government announced today that they were going to introduce more barriers to trucks and large vehicles along some major thoroughfares, we would support them. Advice could be issued immediately to all elected officials not to remove existing barriers, as the Foreign Secretary did when he was Mayor of London. If the Government announced that they were going to halt and reverse the police budget cuts this year, we would support them.

The Government have announced a commission to tackle extremism. We welcome such a commission in principle, although some have suggested that it is being set up because the Government cannot make good on their repeated promises to introduce anti-extremism legislation. We note that there are already laws against incitement, conspiracy and murder. We are told that some perpetrators were known to the authorities.

I was at the Finsbury Park mosque with the Prime Minister, and more than one of the faith leaders raised the importance of a review of the Prevent strategy. In common with many members of the communities involved, we believe that, despite the good work that has happened under Prevent, the strategy needs to be reviewed. It needs not to run the risk of alienating communities; we have to work with all communities. The terror threat confronts us all, and we must all confront it together. If the Government want to discuss with us how we can help engage all communities in the fight against our common threat of terrorism, we will be only too happy to help.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Ms Abbott]

I have to make progress.

When I was at the Finsbury Park mosque last week, people there would have been concerned that Government Members do not want to take part seriously in a debate of this nature. I note that there was no promise of further legislation on counter-terrorism. Max Hill has said that the security services already have enough powers. The Opposition concur, and it now seems that the majority of the Cabinet also agree.

Resources remain the key issue in fighting terrorism. The Conservatives have constantly sought to portray Labour as not facing up to the challenges posed by terrorism, but in our communities—in the inner cities and in areas such as London Bridge, Finsbury Park and Manchester—we face up to the day-to-day threat of terrorism and disorder. Nobody takes those issues more seriously than Members on this side of the House. We speak for our communities, and for the parents concerned that their children may be drawn into terrorist activity. We seek to offer practical remedies and support, and to support the Government in strategies that do not run counter to our liberties and community support.

Talking tough on terrorism and antisocial behaviour is cheap. Like all decent services in a civilised society, security costs money. Records show that since 2010, the Tories have proved unwilling to spend what is necessary to keep us safe. We need only look at what has happened to police numbers and Border Force officials, the closures of fire stations and the cuts to fire officers. Labour is prepared to spend the money and commit the resources to keep us safe. In closing—

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[Amber Rudd]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. We all need to choose our words carefully, but we also need to call out what we believe this is. We should talk about radical extremist ideology, whether it is Islamic or far right, but we need to make sure that we are clear that we are equally hostile to both, and will take action where either is doing damage to society.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

Following up what the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) said about the use of terminology, does the Home Secretary accept that there is a valuable store of experience from the past in the way agencies tackled the doctrines of fascism and Nazism, and subsequently of Marxism-Leninism, and that questions such as the use of vocabulary mean that we need a specialist agency to co-ordinate this effort in the future as we did successfully in those past instances?

[Amber Rudd]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his contribution. This may be something that the new commission for counter-extremism will want to look at.

Since 2015, we have had a Government-wide counter-extremism strategy, the first of its kind. At the heart of the strategy is a partnership with communities to make sure that we build on British values. We have published a hate crime action plan and funded additional security measures at more than 50 places of worship. We are also supporting 53 civil society groups that are confronting extremism in their communities.

However, defeating the evil ideology of extremism is one of the greatest challenges of our time, and there is more that we must be able to do. That is why we will have the new commission, which will support the Government to identify and eradicate extremist ideology in all its forms. Across society and online, we will work with communities, and public sector and civil society groups, to promote and defend our pluralistic values of democracy, freedom of belief and expression, the rule of law, mutual respect, and opportunity for all. The commission will advise the Government on what new powers might be needed to tackle the evolving threat. Work is under way on the design of the commission, and we will set out our plans in due course.

Turning to the future immigration system, the Gracious Speech included an immigration Bill that will allow the Government to end the EU’s rules on free movement of EU nationals in the UK, ensuring that we have the flexibility to create a fair and controlled immigration system. It will give us control over the numbers of people who come to the UK from the EU while welcoming those with the skills and expertise to make our nation better. What these rules look like will depend on the needs of the UK, and we are considering all the options of our future system very carefully. It is imperative that we understand what the impact could be on different sectors of the economy and the labour market, and that we make sure that businesses and communities have an opportunity to contribute their views on any future system. As now, new immigration rules will be subject to scrutiny by Parliament.

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[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the eloquence of the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), and an honour to be re-elected once again to represent the lovely New Forest East constituency.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr George Howarth)]

Order. I am sorry to interrupt the right hon. Gentleman, but I should have announced that there is now a time limit of six minutes, which I think he was aware of, in order to accommodate as many people who want to speak as possible. Dr Lewis, your six minutes start now.

[Dr Lewis]

I have at least benefited from a few extra seconds as a result.

There is plenty to welcome in this Queen’s Speech, from the prioritisation of mental health to the forthcoming visit of Their Majesties the King and Queen of Spain, which will give us all a chance to show that our friendship with that great country is as enduring and immovable as the Rock of Gibraltar. I will touch, however, on two other aspects of the Queen’s Speech, and they will not come as a surprise to colleagues who know of my areas of speciality.

The first is the reiteration of the Government’s pledge to continue to meet the NATO commitment to spend at least 2% of national income on defence. I am sorry to say that it is not enough. One of the things that the Select Committee on Defence managed to establish, through a great deal of hard work and original research by its professional and dedicated staff, was a comparison over the decades of what happened to defence with a graph showing something very different for other high-spending subjects. We found that in the early 1960s we spent similar sums—about 6% of GDP—on welfare and defence. Now we spend six times as much on welfare as we do on defence. In the mid-1980s we spent similar sums—about 5% of GDP—on education, health and defence. Now we spend two and a half times as much on education and nearly four times as much on health as we do on defence. In every year from 1981 until 1987, at the height of east-west confrontation, we spent between 4.3% and 5.1% of GDP on defence, yet even after the cold war had finished, even as late as the financial year 1995-96, we were spending 3% of GDP on defence—a total that does not include things such as war pensions and Ministry of Defence civil service pensions.

[Mrs Moon]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Dr Lewis]

I will happily give way to my fellow former member of the Defence Committee.

[Mrs Moon]

I thank the former Chairman of the Select Committee for giving way. He, like me, was at a dinner last night at which it was pointed out that at 2%, without pensions and all the other bizarre add-ons that the Government add to get this country to 2%, France will be spending €56 billion on defence; Germany, when it gets to 2%, will be at €70 billion. We are at £36 billion. How can we hold our heads up high and say that we can defend ourselves with sums like that?

[Dr Lewis]

The hon. Lady is a staunch defender of everything to do with the defence of this country, and she is absolutely right. It is a measure of the management downwards of our expectations that we are supposed to ring the church bells in triumph at our not falling below the bare minimum that NATO members are supposed to achieve. We really have to rethink this. We really should be looking at 3% of GDP, and not this bare minimum of 2%.

I want to turn mainly to what is said in the Queen’s Speech about the creation of a commission for countering extremism,

“to support the government in stamping out extremist ideology in all its forms, both across society and on the internet, so it is denied a safe space to spread.”

That implies, although it is not explicit, that the new body will be some form of executive agency. I want to hear from the Front Bench that that will be the case, because we are approaching a key point: it looks likely that the territory seized by ISIL/Daesh will be retaken from it. That will rightly be hailed as a considerable achievement, but we need to remember that only a few years ago no one had heard about ISIL/Daesh, and everybody was overwhelmingly concerned with al-Qaeda. It was unusual for a terrorist organisation to seize territory, because by doing that, ISIL/Daesh gave up the advantage of invisibility, which is what most terrorist organisations make maximum use of. However, I venture to suggest that when it has been removed from its territory and its moment has passed, there will be other groups that take its place, perhaps fighting in different areas and perhaps not trying to seize territory. This will go on and on, as long as there is no effective response to the underlying ideology.

This is not the first time that there has been talk of commissions of this sort. Back in 2013, David Cameron had a taskforce on tackling radicalisation and extremism. On that occasion, too, evidence was taken, but I believe that any future successful plan needs to draw on the similar threats that we faced and overcame in the past.

As I said in an earlier intervention, huge agencies were called into existence to counter other totalitarian ideologies. This rather massive book was never really meant to be published. It is called “The Secret History of PWE”. PWE was the Political Warfare Executive, and the book is a classified history of all the work that it did to counter fascist and Nazi ideology. It was published as recently as 2002. Another organisation, the Information Research Department at the Foreign Office, worked on a grand scale to counter the poisonous ideology of Marxism-Leninism.

What we need today is an organisation that is equally wide-ranging, equally proficient, and equally capable of answering the thoughtful interjection of the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) on the subject of the vocabulary that we should use—whether we should use the terms “Islamic”, “un-Islamic”, or simply “violent extremism”. We need an agency to do that. Until we have such an agency, and until it operates to scale, groups will continue to crop up to implement the ideology, and we do not want that to happen.

Terror Attacks

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Thursday 22nd June 2017 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

I thank the hon. and learned Lady for her question and her kind welcome.

The recommendations that the commission on extremism makes will need to be brought before Parliament. I therefore expect full scrutiny of the recommendations when they are brought to Parliament to be taken forward.

I can confirm that we will always provide the resources necessary to keep our citizens safe. We have already announced substantial uplifts to the security services. There will be 1,900 new people joining the security services up until 2020, and an increased number of armed officers are being made available in the country.

I can also tell the hon. and learned Lady that later this year we will conduct a full-scale counter-terrorism exercise involving Police Scotland and forces from the north of England. We will always work with the Scottish Government and police to ensure that we keep all parts of the United Kingdom safe.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Will there be an opportunity to give evidence to the commission for countering terrorism and extremism, based on the lessons that we have learnt in the past to counter other totalitarian ideologies such as communism and Nazism? Does my right hon. Friend accept that organisations like ISIL/Daesh and al-Qaeda rise and fall, but the underlying doctrine of what ought to be called un-Islamic extremism persists? Does she accept that that is what must be countered, and that an active Government agency to counter it is what is required?

[Amber Rudd]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely correct. Extremism comes in many different forms. “Un-Islamic extremism” is one way of describing it, and it is a perfectly reasonable description. I would expect the commission on extremism to ask people to give evidence, so that we can be sure to collect the best possible information in order to do the best possible job for our communities.

Leaving the EU: Security, Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Wednesday 18th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sir Nicholas Soames]

I very strongly agree with the hon. Gentleman. That is very important. I have high hopes that the Prime Minister, when she visits President Trump, will make those points clearly. I hope President Trump will say something in his inauguration speech that will clarify what he meant by “obsolete” in relation to NATO. I am not offended by that. I was discussing it with the Chairman of the Select Committee on Defence, my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), and I do not think that President Trump meant it as an insult. It is true that there is much about NATO that is highly unsatisfactory and obsolete, not least because many countries do not pay their fair whack. It is very slow to transform and is not equipped for the new asymmetric hybrid versions of warfare that we will have to contend with, or as advanced as Russia, as has been seen in its unbelievably bad behaviour in Crimea.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Before my right hon. Friend gets back to his main oration, I would like to draw attention to the context in which President Trump was reported. He said that NATO is extremely important to him. He seems to be using the word “obsolete” in the sense that NATO needs to be not abolished but modernised to face new threats. We should not read too much into the nuances of the individual words he speaks, because nuance does not seem to be his style.

[Sir Nicholas Soames]

My right hon. Friend is spot-on, and I am sure these matters will play out. If one looks at the wonderful success of the security architecture designed by those wise men and women after the last great war, one sees how well it has served the world in peace, and in good times and bad times. This does not seem to me a sensible time to do anything other than support it.

With the threats to our common security becoming even more serious and in many ways more insidious, our response surely cannot be to co-operate with one another less, but must be to work together more. As the Prime Minister said in her speech yesterday:

“I am proud of the role Britain has played and will continue to play in promoting Europe’s security. Britain has led Europe on the measures needed to keep our continent secure—whether it is implementing sanctions against Russia following its action in Crimea, working for peace and stability in the Balkans”—

an extraordinarily important piece of work right now—

“or securing Europe’s external border. We will continue to work closely with our European allies in foreign and defence policy even as we leave the EU itself.”

I hope the Minister will agree that it is important that we demonstrate, even during the inevitable heat of the negotiations, our absolute determination to be good partners, allies and friends to Europe, and the fact that we are, as my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister so rightly said, leaving the European Union but most emphatically not leaving Europe.

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[James Berry]

Pending the negotiations, we should continue down the path of integration in all these policing and criminal justice measures. We have already done that in respect of Europol in a decision that was approved by the House last month.

I shall move on to another important measure: the passenger name records directive. This was explained to members of the Committee at Copenhagen airport. It is a common system for collecting and processing data held by airlines, including names, travel dates, itineraries, seat numbers, baggage and means of payment. These data are vital in tracking criminal and terrorist movements to prevent and detect crime. It is important to note that the EU has bilateral data sharing arrangements for passenger name records with the US, Australia and Canada. It is also negotiating an arrangement with Mexico, so there is no good reason why a non-EU country cannot participate in what is clearly a system that has mutual benefits.

The European arrest warrant has had a transformative effect on the ability of the police and prosecuting authorities to get those who need to face justice in the UK—whether relating to a prosecution or a prison sentence—back to the UK to do so. It bypasses the fiendishly complicated extradition rules that apply with respect to some other countries, because countries that are part of the European arrest warrant arrangements cannot refuse to extradite their own citizens, and there are legally mandated time limits during which extraditions have to take place. In 2015-16, 2,102 individuals were arrested in the UK and deported on European arrest warrants. Those were people we plainly did not want in this country. We have been able to repatriate more than 2,500 individuals from EU countries since we have been a member of the European arrest warrant system, including some well-known terrorists, serious criminals and paedophiles. There is a list of high-profile cases, but I will not go into it now. I agree with the hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) that this is the most effective extradition system in the world, and it would be madness if we were in a situation in which we had to leave it.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

I am not an expert on this subject, but there is concern that, under the European arrest warrant, UK citizens could find themselves extradited to other EU countries in which the justice system falls far short of what we would regard as adequate. Does my hon. Friend have any concerns about that?

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 5th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Goodwill]

The result of the referendum made it clear that we need to control the number of people coming from the European Union, and the negotiations will take that and other matters into account.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Past waves of immigration have proved successful because of the integration of new communities into existing ones. The report by Louise Casey has not yet been published, but it has been said that it suggests a form of cultural separatism in the Islamic community. Is that true and, if so, will we be responding to the report in an appropriately thoughtful way?

[Amber Rudd]

My right hon. Friend’s question gives me an opportunity to thank Louise Casey for her report, and to say to him and the House that we will of course study it carefully to learn better how to improve integration in our communities.

Scamming: Vulnerable Individuals

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Thursday 8th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Julian Knight]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising that point. She will have come across that issue in her role as Chair of the Health Committee. As I understand it, such cases are not simply a question of being defrauded of money; they can actually cost people their lives, in the worst possible circumstances.

As well as depressive episodes, 45% of victims suffer a generalised anxiety disorder compared with just 15% of non-victims. The stress that victims suffer can both exacerbate pre-existing health conditions and induce post-traumatic stress, and 10% of victims have unexplained hospital admissions within three months. The circles of these frauds—their effects within our wider society—roll outwards and outwards. More horrifyingly, people who have been defrauded are two-and-a-half times more likely than non-victims to be in care or dead within two years of the event. Scammers take so much more than cash. They can rob us of our self-confidence and elderly citizens of the ability to live independently.

We should not forget the people who fight back. I have enjoyed reading stories of people called scam baiters, who turn the tables on these predators by wasting their time and making fools of them. I particularly liked one story that the BBC covered a few years ago of a gentleman who managed to persuade a Nigerian scammer to daub himself in war paint to prove his dedication to a made-up religion. Overall, however, the clear knock-on effects for personal independence and relationships add huge invisible costs to the headline figures of fraud.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on the excellent case he is making about this very important subject. From personal experience, I know that some scammers concentrate on people who are beginning to suffer from short-term memory loss. Will he explain to what extent that is a feature of this phenomenon? If it is, as I suspect, a very significant feature, does it not highlight the importance of people who are beginning to lose their faculties trying, whenever possible, to give power of attorney to reliable relatives so that they are not vulnerable to being taken advantage of in this way?

[Julian Knight]

That is absolutely correct. We also need better training for bank staff. Nationwide is very good at spotting the signs of when an individual is being defrauded. I remember one case that was told to me by my grandmother, who is 91, of a lady on her estate who had tried to withdraw several thousand pounds from the Nationwide with two burly men behind her. That case related to fake tarmacking and the usual fake repairs. Nationwide must be commended for stopping that withdrawal from happening. The Post Office, too, has put in place such training. My right hon. Friend is right to make the link between scamming and the ever-increasing instances, due to longevity, of dementia in our society. This is another challenge we must meet as a society through financial institutions, and family and other support networks.

The clear knock-on effects for personal independence and relationships add huge invisible costs to the headline figures I mentioned, both by increasing demand for state support and simply in terms of human misery. One of the reasons why fraud is so difficult to tackle is that it can take many different forms. Con artists are adept at exploiting people’s unfamiliarity with the technical aspects of a product or service in order to trick them. They are also quick to exploit the latest news story or Government initiative, and sometimes simply try to exploit our generosity after a natural disaster by posing as someone in need of disaster relief. An email apparently coming from a disaster zone and asking for help is a very common trick of the fraudsters.

Several constituents have visited my surgery to complain that their insurers will not allow them to take money out of their pension funds to invest into unregulated investments—so-called “penny shares”—which allow scammers to sell people worthless stocks and other asset classes. I am sure that other hon. Members have received similar visits. I have had to be very clear to those individuals that their insurers are perfectly right and that they should never put their pension at risk. I encourage Members to remain vigilant about such stories. This “pensions unlocking”, as it is called, is just one way in which con artists are trying to exploit the Government’s new, more liberal pensions system. I fully support the Government’s desire to give more power to individual savers, but such cases highlight the importance of developing anti-fraud protections alongside policies, rather than after they are implemented. That applies to our regulators, too.

Impersonating banks is another common form of financial fraud, as the constituent of my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury discovered. According to Financial Fraud Action UK, scammers are now targeting individuals directly for passwords, passcodes and PINs as security systems become ever more sophisticated and complex. FFA UK reported that losses to financial fraud totalled £755 million in 2015, but that was only what was reported. Worryingly, that figure represented a 26% increase on 2014, despite bank and card company security systems intercepting and preventing £1.76 billion of fraud, or £7 in every £10 of potential losses.

Fraud is also flourishing on the internet. According to consumer group Which?, more than 5 million online scams were carried out last year, with an astonishing £9 billion lost to fraudsters. It also reports that six in 10 of us reported being targeted by online scammers in the 12 months up to May this year. Frankly, I am surprised the figure is only six out of 10; I am forever being asked to wire money to various parts of the world, basically for it to be laundered. The most common types of fraud are phishing emails—usually purporting to be from a bank or senior official—seeking money, and bogus computer support.

Alongside this cutting-edge crime, the more traditional forms of fraud flourish too, such as false tradesman tricking people into paying extortionate amounts for unnecessary work and often providing cover for outright distraction burglaries into the bargain. I was struck by a case sent in by the Chartered Trading Standards Institute on this very point. The case involved a 78-year-old pensioner from Lincolnshire who lived alone and was isolated from family. The pensioner was conned out of his house by a conman who convinced him that major repair work was needed on his property. After being cold-called and visited, he agreed to will part of his property in return for the work being carried out. However, the documents he signed actually gave the house to the scammers, who then placed him in a caravan park. It was only the victim’s testimony in court that guaranteed a conviction. The officers involved had no doubt there were other victims, silent victims, who had lost homes in this way.

The huge financial and human costs of fraud make the case for action clear, but the problem could very well be much more serious than we realise. The CTSI believes that only 5% of scams are ever reported, with fear and shame keeping victims silent and preventing them from seeking help. There are already some very strong efforts in this area. In addition to the preventive measures by banks and card companies that I have already mentioned, trading standards has been collaborating with charities and the police to afford better protection to victims. For example, there has been a concerted effort to provide previous victims, and those whose age or health makes them likely to be victimised, with call blockers. These have so far protected 1,600 vulnerable people and blocked 95% of 81,000 attempted nuisance calls.

Based on the overall statistics, trading standards estimates that more than 11,500 scams, which would have been carried out, have been stopped. Expanding the capacity of trading standards, as many have called for, would make these efforts more effective. More needs to be done, especially when the resale of personal information makes so many people vulnerable to crimes such as identity theft. The CTSI has called for much stricter regulation and control of personal data to counter industrial-scale and legal harvesting of personal data which can then be put to illegal use or sold on. So often, the first purchase of the information can be done through clicking a box, for example to sign up to a newsletter. The information then goes into the ether. I do not believe that people know quite what they are signing up to: there is no transparency. The first few purchases of that information might be bona fide and legitimate. Further down the scale, however, we start to find in investigations that holding companies, which are a front, are effectively buying in the information for fraudsters.

Despite the fact that 85% of people, a huge majority, think that businesses have an equal or greater responsibility to protect their customers from fraud than consumers, the Cyber Security Breaches 2016 Survey found that only 5% of firms invest in ongoing monitoring of hacks into their systems, despite more than six in 10 reporting such breaches. I know from personal experience that some banks have a long way to go in their own security arrangements, too. Very recently, HSBC asked my wife to send some very sensitive financial and personal information to a private email address. That was legitimate. It was bona fide. But what on earth is a bank doing allowing private and sensitive information to go outside its own networks?

Some firms report to me the astonishing claim that some of our current systems work against responsible corporate behaviour. A partner in the financial consultancy firm Fairway wrote to me that the Financial Ombudsman Service was holding his firm accountable for losses incurred via some very risky, and frankly quite murky-sounding, investments that his firm had clearly warned its clients to avoid because they would put their life savings at risk. One adjudicator at the FOS had apparently suggested that the firm should have refused to advise the people involved. How can we have a system that makes it harder for people engaged in potentially problematic and risky investments to receive professional advice? It is essential for us to ensure that our regulators are focusing on the authors of dodgy investment schemes which blur the line between legitimate business and outright fraud, and not unfairly penalising those who try to help.

The Government can also make a real difference by stress-testing policies and building anti-fraud protections into them as they are developed, rather than waiting until afterwards. I know that the Cabinet Office has made great strides in relation to the sharing of information throughout the Government to track down benefit fraudsters and other financial scammers.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Sarah Newton)]

I wholeheartedly congratulate the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) and my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Julian Knight) on securing this important debate. I know they have a long-standing interest in tackling scamming, especially when vulnerable individuals are the intended victims. They have set out the wide range of harm that fraudsters and scammers can cause. I assure the House that tackling scams is a priority for this Government. Scams can have a devastating impact, particularly on the most vulnerable people in society. Mass marketing frauds can affect any one of us, at any time. We are more likely to be a victim of fraud than of any other crime, but when caught out we can sometimes feel ashamed or not want to admit we have been hoodwinked. That, however, can make it hard to get a full sense of the problem. It is really important that we do all we can to understand it and respond, which is why I welcome this debate.

We know that older people are more at risk. The National Trading Standards scams team says that the typical person it provides support to is 74 and living alone. That is why I welcome the work of Bournemouth University and the Chartered Trading Standards Institute to investigate the impacts of scams on older people. Their report on financial scamming earlier this year set out clear recommendations for action by the Government, by charities and by private institutions such as banks. As much of the debate today is focusing on the report’s recommendations, and I will address them directly.

The first recommendation was for all agencies, including banks, to recognise their duty of care to those with dementia and to take measures to protect them. The second was to strengthen rules on data protection to reduce the risk of vulnerable people ending up on so-called suckers lists used by criminals to target their scams. The third was to introduce safeguards at banks and building societies to prevent those who feel at risk of scams from losing large amounts of money.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

I thank the Minister for the interest she has taken in this issue. I know from personal experience that it is difficult to get a bank to take action unless someone has already given power of attorney, as I said in an earlier intervention. When this happened to someone very close to me and I told the bank concerned that I needed to be tipped off if there were any unusual withdrawals, nothing really happened until a particularly alert cashier, on her own initiative, did that. After five years, I eventually got success: the fraudster was forced to repay all the money and to pay the costs of the case. Therefore, will the Minister do everything possible to persuade banks, if a power of attorney is not in place, to have procedures in place if a worried close relative asks them to monitor irregular or unusual withdrawals and let them know?

[Sarah Newton]

I thank my right hon. Friend for raising that constituency case. It reflects the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull made that some banks have good procedures in place and some do not, and that some staff have been well trained and some have not. We need to ensure that every person working in the bank is as good as those identified by the Nationwide, which my hon. Friend mentioned. I will come on to address the wider point: what more banks and building societies can do to protect their vulnerable customers.

I am pleased to report that the Government, regulators and private companies are responding strongly to the recommendations that I have outlined. The Government have taken action more widely on nuisance calls, including a new requirement for all direct marketing callers to provide caller line identification. That came into effect on 16 May. The measure increases consumer choice, by making it easier for people to identify direct marketing calls and to choose whether to accept them. It will also increase the Information Commissioner’s Office’s ability to investigate such calls.

Members may also be aware that, in the Queen’s Speech on 18 May, the Government announced their intention to bring forward a Digital Economy Bill. Among other legislative changes, it will introduce a measure making it a requirement for the Information Commissioner to issue a statutory code of practice on direct marketing.